Photo from Eraserheads Combo on the Run website
After our interview and the energy in the room had settled into relaxed mode, Ely Buendia drifts away from a conversation with his team. From a far corner, someone was softly strumming “Ang Huling El Bimbo.” Ely hears it and walks toward a fellow introvert and sings along just as softly.
It is an unguarded moment of connection — a word he mentioned earlier in our conversation as the bedrock of his songwriting life.
The documentary "Combo on the Run," which chronicles the story of the Eraserheads, took years to complete, from pre-production to the final shoot. The time span feels modest compared to the decades of history it attempts to contain. What emerges is a portrait that does not smooth over contradictions. “The band definitely did not want this to be a type of showbiz documentary of only the fun parts,” Buendia says. “We wanted things to be really raw and pretty honest, because that’s what I think the fans also expected of us.”
He agrees when I say that the film, directed by Maria Diane Ventura (see Q&A below), captures both the myth and the mess. He has accepted that the two are inseparable. For a band like the Eraserheads, whose music is embedded in the everyday lives of Filipino listeners, the songs are tied to routines, to workdays, to fleeting moments of relief. Buendia understands that connection. “I got into music because of the communal aspect of it,” he says. “I wanted to connect, being a wallflower-y guy, introverted, and didn’t really know what was out there. It’s like sending signals, basically, to communicate with other people.”
He describes songwriting as an attempt to locate something meaningful within himself and hoping that it resonates elsewhere. There was no strategy behind its reach. “When a songwriter like me writes, they’re not really thinking of will this be a hit with this person or these types of people,” he says. “You’re just expressing what you feel, and that’s the only way you know how to write. I’m just lucky, I guess, that a lot of people related.”
Luck, in this context, feels like an incomplete explanation because his songs are known to carry a specificity that invites listeners to fill in their own lives.
When I asked, being a private person but also very emotionally transparent in his art, how he decides which parts he allows himself to put into his songs and which parts are still off limits, Buendia acknowledges the duality. “It was easy because I found security in the thought that there was the cover of art and music,” he says. “Even though I was talking about really personal stuff, it was veiled in the artistic sense.”
The documentary required him to revisit periods he might have preferred to leave undisturbed. “It was kind of difficult to look back and recount those painful years,” he says. The process, however, offered its own form of release. He describes it as therapeutic, even cathartic. The act of remembering reopened certain wounds while also returning him to a familiar creative space. “It opened some wounds, I guess,” he says. “That’s the way most artists create, through processing the pain.”
Photo from Eraserheads Combo on the Run website
At 55, Buendia speaks with the clarity of someone who has spent years examining the same questions from different angles. The challenge now lies in continuing to evolve. “It’s trying to find new ways to express myself without being too predictable,” he says. Growth, for him, is not optional. It is the core of his identity as an artist. He recognizes the tension that comes with it, especially when audiences hold tightly to earlier versions of his work. “Sometimes it’s hard when people don’t really see any value to (growth), especially the older fans,” he says. “But as an artist, that’s what I thrive on. It’s change and being able to grow.”
There is little interest in performance beyond the music itself. Buendia does not frame authenticity as a conscious choice, but rather a default setting. “Pretending is super-alien to me,” he says. “Why would you do that, even in front of an audience, or even in front of a camera? I didn’t see the point in that.” The statement carries no defensiveness, simply describes how he moves through the world.
His influences reflect a deep grounding in Filipino music. Growing up in the 1970s, he listened to artists like Rico Puno, Apo Hiking Society, and Juan de la Cruz Band, absorbing their sense of style, songwriting, and rebellion. They shaped his instincts as an artist and his understanding of what music could do.
The comparison he draws to Elvis Presley leans toward shared struggle rather than scale of fame. “He was born poor,” Buendia says. “He also faced a lot of challenges, like artistically, culturally.” He connected with him in the complications that come with success rather than the rewards.
Even now, the Eraserheads remain in a process of rediscovery. “We are kind of healing and trying to get to know each other as people for the first time,” he says. The admission may surprise fans who imagined a deeper personal bond behind the music. Their relationship, he explains, was built around work. Rehearsals, writing sessions, performances. The rest came later, if at all. “We’ve only seen each other through that lens of we’re a band, and we’re supposed to make music.”
After the interview, as we were hanging out with his team, Buendia reaches into a bag and pulls out his medication. He has gone through three health episodes, experiences that have reshaped his attention to diet and daily life. The presence of the medicine does not interrupt the conversation. It’s just a silent acknowledgment of time and consequence.
He returns to the group, listening more than speaking. The energy around him does not shift to accommodate his presence. He does not require it to. The mythology of a rock star often depends on command, on the ability to draw every eye in a room. Buendia operates differently. The gravity is there, though it does not announce itself.
Later, as he prepares to do another interview, I start humming “With A Smile”. He looks up, says that he should do another video showing his deadpan reaction whenever someone sings his songs to him. It happens often.
He doesn’t linger on it, but smiles, briefly, and turns back to work.
*****
Q&A with Maria Diane Ventura, writer-director of 'Eraserheads: Combo on the Run'
Photo from Eraserheads Combo on the Run website
What was the most difficult part of telling this story?
The hardest thing was maintaining objectivity, given the history of the relationship, the band history, and also, sort of getting them all to sit down and talk about things that you don't want to talk about, and knowing that they've always represented this kind of aloofness and guardedness about them. So how do I pierce through that wall? Basically, the other things were mostly technical that we had to comb through, like terabytes of archival footage.
And how did you pierce that wall?
I was incredibly lucky that I was able to capture all this at the time when they were also mature enough to have distance between the past and have a different perspective on life. Which is the same as what I was going through back then. After COVID, di ba parang it just made me realize a lot of things that I've been trying to run away from, from difficult history or past, and realizing that that's not really the way to heal or to grow. It's really by looking back, and it means self-awareness, and that growth comes from reflection, and part of that is going back to that past. And this was also my goal: to find catharsis through this. I was able to achieve even more. Seeing them very willing to be so open and candid and honest about what they went through and seeing these men, the quintessential rock stars, allow themselves that vulnerability. It also kind of gives you permission to access those parts of yourself that you don't normally want to say especially since people look up to them.
It's very risky to be vulnerable. So as a director, you shape the narrative. But what's unique also about it is you're part of their story as well.
Yeah, to a certain extent, Yong, it was difficult to be completely objective. But at the same time, the fact that I was there when it happened, it gave me also an insight that nobody else would have. I knew what was going on, and especially with what was going on with Ely, so I knew the story. And knowing that, it was easier to thread the narrative, precisely because of that experience.
Were there parts where you were like, 'That's not how I remember.'
I believe that everybody was speaking their truth and being completely authentic with what they were feeling. The fact that they knew I was there, they knew they couldn't bullshit. Might as well tell the truth. What I was surprised by was that I didn't know what they were going through, because I only knew one perspective, and that perspective was also right. The sentiments were right, and then it just makes you realize that multiple truths can coexist at the same time.
In making this movie, what surprised you the most about Ely and the band as a whole, once the cameras were rolling?
I was really surprised and very grateful that they're very honest. And I mean, their notoriety for this sort of hard exterior, or like aloofness, was actually just that: like a wall, like a mask. But underneath all that, these people were able to tap into the subconscious, able to capture the zeitgeist of their times. You can't do that if you're not connected or empathetic or in tune with your emotions. So they were emotional people, but kind of pushing that down and putting up an exterior. And I guess that complexity about them sort of really came through while I was doing this project.
How about you with you and Ely? How was that dynamic? How were you able to get to this point now, you're able to work together?
With Ely, the foundation is really trust, and there's a lot of respect, and I consider him family. Not just a best friend or something like that, he's really family. And that connection also allowed for that openness. I've always known him to be this really authentic person, I see that side, and I'm very lucky to be able to have access to that ever since. I wouldn't be working with this guy if I didn't think that he's a great person. He's an amazing artist, but an even better person, I think.
Photo from Eraserheads Combo on the Run website
As a Filipina filmmaker, bringing this story to an international audience, how did you balance cultural specificity with global accessibility?
Once you go really personal, there's a universality to it. You also tap into that universality of things, because we're all human beings. That's why I say, more than this being just a music documentary, this is a human story, human interest story. It was very revelatory and very personal. We're more alike than we think we are. I'm a woman, for example, and I feel that resonance. And if I can feel that, despite the differences we have, that would probably be something that other people would also be able to appreciate, regardless of culture, regardless of differences. This was primarily my objective, and my goal in filmmaking. To break barriers and to prove that we're all essentially the same.
What do you hope that audiences will take away from it, especially the fans?
I would like to leave that to them. I could only share my own experience, takeaway, and catharsis from making this film, from doing it, from finishing it, which is the importance of connection, the importance of communication, and how our actions affect each other, and that we should never assume what the other person was thinking. It's really important to share our perspective. Going back to what I said before about multiple truths coexisting, it's so easy to carry resentment for so long just because you don't know what the other person was going through. It's in a simple act of expression that can melt away years of conflict.
What do you think that is? Is it a uniquely Filipino thing, or is it a male thing?
I mean, especially men, I would guess. I've been meeting a lot of people from everywhere else, I think it's consensus that we're socially conditioned to not talk about difficult things. We feel that it's rude, or we don't want to be a burden to other people. We could avoid a lot of issues and conflict, if we just sort of learn that exercise and to stop making vulnerability synonymous to weakness, which it isn’t. It's strength. It's brave to open up, which is what they did. They were very brave. It was healing for me to see them healing through the film, also because I saw the stark contrast between how they were in the beginning versus now. And that's why one of my favorite lines in the film was from Ely. “It feels like this is the first time I've known them.” It's so crazy for me how you can know someone for 30 to 40 years and say that line.
The film doesn't rush toward redemption or reunion, especially with the issues regarding Marcus (Adoro) hovering. Did you feel pressured externally or internally to offer a more comforting ending?
I gave a truthful and bittersweet ending. There was no intention to make it end the way it did, without revealing too much. That was just the natural progression of things, that I captured that, and that's why it was important for me, because I remember Ely said it was a two-month interview, but actually it was three years of going back and kind of letting their relationship unfold naturally. I had to see how they were at the start and after three years. And you really see that, not that I was forcing it. I knew that them being emotional and being in touch with themselves, and being more mature.
There's an undercurrent of gendered experience in being a woman navigating a male-dominated music scene. Was it something that you consciously also wanted the film to acknowledge? Or did it emerge naturally?
I wasn't really conscious in terms of how I've carried myself or conducted myself in this world. I don't go into the room thinking I'm a woman, I have to follow certain ways of doing things or behavior. I go into a room and I feel like I'm a person, and the other person is not different. It's not better or not less. They're just different, but we're all the same. And that gave me some sort of confidence to know that I always go in a room and negotiate or do things in a way that felt real to me and not considering that I am a woman.
The movie also captured this particular time in the Philippines. Tell me about that. How did you decide what went into it?
That was also one of the most difficult things. But I really wanted to establish or contextualize their relevance in our society, in our culture. And for me to do that was to tell their journey amidst what was actually going on, socially, politically, at that time, and I felt it was relevant. Because one of the questions in my mind going into this film, was how did Ely's songs resonate with so many people? Why was he able to capture that essence or spirit of the nation? Because we were collectively going through all these very important moments at that time where we were collectively connected through it, and Eraserheads was able to tap into that, and that's why it resonated with everyone.